Observations on politics, news, culture and humor

Big-s Socialists still exist in America

Even in Cincinnati, OH. The Cincinnati Enquirer used the Senate candidacy of a local Socialist to set up an interesting piece on the local socialist movement. To be clear, I despise socialism. I think it completely misunderstands human nature and has ruined many of the good, classically liberal victories we managed to win against government coming out of the Enlightenment. But at least these guys are honest about it. They aren’t pussyfooting around the issue and they aren’t pulling punches. There’s even a lot of issues that an arch-libertarian like me could agree with them on–immigration, gay rights, peace. More on the piece itself and socialism in general after the jump.

Still, the bad outweighs the good. Example #1:

“If folks like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh make their careers off of using the word socialism as a slur, how bad could it be?” asks 35-year-old Shane Johnson of Corryville, a union electrician who helped revive Cincinnati’s International Socialist Organization chapter this year, which has about a dozen members.

“We should be fighting for full employment. End wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” La Botz said. “We should immediately take over BP. What they own is too valuable and too powerful to be in private hands.”

Ok, first guy–please take a class in logic. Your current logic: if people I really disagree with say something is bad, then it must be good or at least better than whatever they support. What if Sean Hannity says murder is bad? Are you going to murder someone now?

The second guy is the Senate candidate. By his logic, if some company or group reaches a level of ownership or power that, by his own arbitrary standards, is too much for a private actor to control, then the state should rob them of it. Hmm, yes, because the state has done such a bang-up job managing things in the past. It’s a position both morally repugnant and pragmatically ludicrous.

Then the Enquirer tries to explain socialism:

Socialists believe in equality for all – hence their devotion to civil rights – and a fair distribution of wealth.

Really? Seriously, guys? For one thing, you can’t achieve equality for all without violating civil rights. You can’t make poor guy A have the same income as rich guy B unless you forcibly extract wealth from rich guy B or stack the societal deck against him. For another thing, phrases like “dictatorship of the proletariat” don’t exactly connote a strong dedication to civil rights in my mind. Then, of course, there is the laundry list of disgustinglybloodthirsty, prison camp–lovingsocialistregimes the world has known, but I suppose you would tell me they weren’t doing socialism right. Maybe you should read Martin Malia, get a clue and realize that the sort of socialist idea you love can only be realized through such iron-fisted means.

Oh, and just for fun, I looked at candidate Dan La Botz’s campaign page. From the issues page:

The United States government must create a full-employment economy.

The U.S. government or state governments should take over many of the idle plants where ready workforces already exist and turn them to green production.

The U.S. and state government should themselves invest in transformative green infrastructure, a new national transportation system, and a new energy system.

We need government jobs programs to employ the unemployed in socially valuable work such as rebuilding our infrastructure and our aging cities, environmental conservation, and programs such as health and education.

Full employment can be created by shortening the work week, 32 hours work for 40 hours pay with no loss in wages.

Asking where the money for these programs would come from is pointless since I’m sure the answer would be something childish like “expropriating the capitalist fatcats!” But the very idea of these programs is bad. Does La Botz understand how long it would take to retrofit existing factory infrastructure to create green jobs? Does he think “socially valuable” work for the unemployed, like FDR’s alphabet soup agencies, went away accidentally? Furthermore, what gives him the right to decree you should be paid 40 hours worth of salary for 32 hours worth of work?

That’s really all I could handle. I used to always wonder why 2004 Libertarian presidential nominee Michael Badnarik would collaborate with the largely-socialist Green candidate David Cobb. It seems to me that the answer is that even though their ideas could pose more harm to freedom than that of conventional leftists in America’s long term, they have so little power that it’s useful to work with them on issues like ballot access laws, corporate handouts, immigration, war and gay rights. So in that sense, welcome to Cincinnati, Socialists.